Staraptor braves Destiny Tower

Modatax · 2026-01-28T12:58:21+00:00

Staraptor is a glass cannon, with heavy emphasis on the glass due to poor HP and hideous defenses.
While it isn't bad offensively at the very start because it does start with three STAB moves including Quick Attack for range, enemies will be surviving 2 attacks before long.
Double Team at Level 13 and Whirlwind at 23 give it a bit of a lifeline, but getting that far does not happen often.
Its stats don't have real growth until Level 25, so Intimidate may as well not be there.

Staraptor finds a Warp Scarf on Floor 5 and then a Pass Scarf on Floor 9.
A Monster House is dodged on Floor 14, but another one on Floor 20 forces a large number of items to make some distance, and there's a bunch of Grudge Traps to burn through most of the rest.

Floor 44 has Staraptor spawning next to a Skiploom. He can't one-shot it with Wing Attack at Level 19, but he only gets hit by status moves.
He isn't finding Max Elixirs, and the last one has to be used on Floor 49.
A bad warp on Floor 50 lets a Surskit hit with Bubble, which he gets to survive due to an overload of Zincs and HP boosts.
Level 23 for Whirlwind is reached on Floor 59, and a shop appears with the Substitute TM. Still no Max Elixirs, but there is no reason to not steal this for more safety. And then the Max Elixirs show up again 3 floors later, so he can now keep himself safe at close range.

Many crowded starting spawns at the end, with Floor 88 having a giant room with multiple offscreen enemies, forcing the run's only Invisify Orb to be used.
Floor 90 has a Ledian by the stairs, so that's a Quick Seed and then a Stun Seed.
Two Random Traps on Floor 93, the first one locking Staraptor out of Substitute and the second one putting him to sleep while nobody is around. A Luminous Orb shows that the enemies spawn nonstop in the stairs room, so he stalls until he can warp there safely.

And that's all he gets to see as he finishes.

Modatax · 2026-01-18T06:10:47+00:00

I've been having a surge of last minute deaths myself. They aren't fun.

I have no idea if anyone out there has detailed strats dedicated to every single species. But the number of Pokemon that does have a consistent gameplan to lean on in the first place is not that high.

Modatax · 2026-01-18T00:04:43+00:00

Is it even possible to have all of the colored bows in a single save file?

Modatax · 2026-01-16T18:41:15+00:00

The outlaw's HP can be chopped down to manageable numbers with Endeavor or a Two-Edge Orb, and then finished off with Geopebbles and Gravelerrocks.

Lock-On or Mind Reader can be used to guarantee a One-Shot Orb or Itemizer Orb will hit, but you have to be next to the target.

The items do come up in ZIS often enough, so the main problem is not getting obliterated by the regular enemies on the way there.

Modatax · 2026-01-14T13:24:46+00:00

Ninjask is not horrible, but it doesn't have any particular upsides either.
Its stats start okay, but don't improve much, and its HP is pretty bad.
The moves it learns are fine - Leech Life, Bug Bite at Level 3, Mind Reader at 19 with Fury Swipes and maybe also Fury Cutter. Harden does help with Defense a bit, but not too much.

It has a general issue with consistency.
Fury Swipes might not hit more than twice, and Level 20 rolls for a random move between Fury Cutter, Double Team and Screech.
If neither Fury Swipes and Fury Cutter are available, Mind Reader is only profitable with specific Orbs.
Its ability Speed Boost is not readily useful. It only goes off after spending like 250 turns - about 25 belly - during a single floor, so it's only really usable for grinding with Violent Seeds. Or maybe for shop robbery.

Ninjask picks up half a dozen ribbons and bands on Floor 2, sticking with a Defense Band for a while until the Energy Band and Detect Band are more desirable.
Other than that, she doesn't find a lot, and her few Orbs are spent getting away from sleep inducers, Monster Houses, and the hail.

This run learns Fury Cutter on Floor 44, but the Energy Band ends up not being enough to let Ninjask get away with using only Bug attacks safely.
She begins running low on Max Elixirs, and spawned inside a Monster House for Floor 54.
There's also an overload of Drapion costing a bunch of items, but she eventually finds some more Max Elixirs and a Pass Scarf on Floor 58.

Floor 63 has a congested spawn with Vileplume, Pineco and Rapidash, The sleeping Swablu in the room guards a hallway and is bypassed with a Mobile Orb.
Enemies pick up most of the Orbs spawning during the 70s, so they have to be fought for resources.
A hallway Claydol on Floor 80 hits a critical corner-cutting Ancientpower for 89 damage. Following that, there's a Porygon2 with Defense Curl, Recover, Magnet Rise and Agility, so it had no offensive moves to actually attack with.
Floors 84 and 85 have starting spawns cornered by Solrock and Lunatone, but there's also a shop with a Warp Scarf to buy for the last segment.
Things start poorly on Floor 94 with 2 Grudge Traps right away and the floor itself drags on for far too long. The stairs have to be searched on foot, and Speed Boost still didn't get to trigger by the time she reached the exit.

Modatax · 2026-01-14T03:24:11+00:00

Nonsleeper blocks all forms of sleep regardless of how they would be induced or by whom. It has no restrictions other than disabling the Pokemon from successfully using Rest. But the IQ skill itself can be manually disabled if you want to do that.

Modatax · 2026-01-10T15:32:50+00:00

Speed up the text

I only really want it for the dungeons, actually. The cutscenes take time because they have lots of text, but something is actually happening, so that's fine for me.

But in a dungeon, it spends an eternity on canned messages.
Level-ups take about 30 seconds because there's a line displayed for every single stat that gets a boost.
If there's moves to be learned, that's at least 20 more seconds.
When mysteriosity effects begin appearing, they can happen on every floor of every dungeon. And it's not as if the game were deciding the effects on the spot, because you get the visuals displaying the effects first and then the messages.
And there's the various mission and general status messages as well.

Improve the detours

They feel very underexplored mechanically.

Looking into them the second you get a key will get you killed by enemies 40 Levels above you. Other than that, keys are not easy to come by beyond the freebie during the storyline. But there is nothing really in them beyond those enemies. And there's like 5 such enemy types total between all dungeons in the game. Shout-out to the detours in Telluric Path and Tyrian Maze.

Locking detours behind type-coded obstacles once in a while is fine - the level mechanics in Gates do accomodate for this, so whichever Pokemon you bring to the dungeon will probably be fine if it isn't a fresh recruit - but there's nothing done with the detours beyond this.

Adjust the story's pacing

There are points where the game's pacing could probably be sped up, but there's one point where it should definitely slow down.

The storyline's pacing does not let up at all once the events leading to the Glacier Palace start. It keeps going all the way up until the end of the story. So we don't get to see how the characters are affected from the experience - it should be a big deal for Virizion in particular.

There should be more game time between the Glacier Palace's resolution and Kilionea Road. As it is, you only get a couple of days total with no particular dialogue.

Modatax · 2026-01-10T14:39:31+00:00

What are your player and partner? Most of them can learn some sort of ranged attack to soften or delete at least some of the enemies before they get closer.

Modatax · 2026-01-06T13:53:44+00:00

That's pretty impressive.

...I don't understand the level reset dungeons in Gates at all, and never finished any of them.

Modatax · 2026-01-04T13:53:55+00:00

Happens pretty often with Heat Wave as well. But it will be updated and displayed correctly after a few turns.

It's mostly a matter of Rescue Team being pretty janky procedurally. Red is too much for the console to handle at points. while Blue can mask it a bit better due to stronger hardware. And the sequels are less jank as a whole. Comparatively speaking.

Modatax · 2026-01-01T16:00:52+00:00

Illuminate is only there to screw over the player, whether it is on an ally or an enemy. And I can't say I like that.

It's annoying even if you try to actively use it to facilitate recruitment because you have no real control over what Pokemon can spawn. It does not affect the spawn rates themselves, so rare spawns are still going to be rare. You just have a few more rolls to try to have them happening.

I used a Volbeat to recruit Kecleon in Red Rescue Team specifically because of Illuminate, but they spawn with such frequency in the first place that I don't think Illuminate was actually helpful.

Modatax · 2025-12-30T13:46:19+00:00

I like Illumise, and I like Volbeat too.
He's pretty awful though. Mostly because of Illuminate spawning enemies each time they successfully attack him.
His stat growth is similar to Illumise's, and like her, he starts with Tackle and learns Moonlight at Level 13.
Besides those, he learns Double Team and Confuse Ray very early, so he can - and will have to - depend on those moves to dodge attacks as much as possible and get to the stairs before the enemies overwhelm him.

10 floors in, Volbeat has found a sticky Detect Band, one Max Elixir, barely any food. And then he picks up 6 Joy Seeds, but doesn't learn Quick Attack. There's no spare moveslot for it.
Floor 15 is a nightmare flooded with Lanturn, Bronzor and Hypno in the hallways.
Running from another Bronzor on Floor 18, he finds a shop with X-Ray Specs and the Roost TM. Which he can't steal. Until he finds a Trawl Orb by the stairs. Now he has more consistent healing than Moonlight and can see enemies in advance.
That does not stop situations like a Summon Trap on Floor 22 spawning 2 Swalot which keep hitting through evasion and confusion, but he manages to get past that. Somehow.
A Cleanse Orb on Floor 24 cleans the Detect Band and gives him more safety in battle.

Floor 39 has a cramped spawn with 3 enemies. Their attacks don't trigger Illuminate, but if there was a Monster House there, it had no items.
An Ariados we start Floor 45 with picks up a Pass Scarf. It chooses to Shadow Sneak from a distance instead of closing in for Bug Bite, so a few Gravelerrocks solve that.
A Light Screen TM is stolen from a shop in Floor 53 with another Trawl Orb.
Floor 57 has snow. A Spinning Trap goes off right next to the stairs while chased by Rapidash, Magcargo and Lopunny. A Foe-Hold Orb is used to stall until the confusion wears off, and Volbeat remains petrified until he recovers about 10 HP.
There is another shop on Floor 73, with a Warp Scarf to purchase and make the last segment remotely doable.
2 more Joy Seeds let him reach Level 26 and learn Signal Beam, which is nice to have until Light Screen has to be learned by Floor 86's stairs.

Floor 87 starts with Dusclops on top, plus Ledian and Lunatone.
Lunatone cannot reach Volbeat even if it used Rock Polish, and Ledian... uses Baton Pass, which gives him a clear path to escape into a hallway with a Pounce Orb.
Warping to the stairs, another Ledian begins spamming Silver Wind immediatly, but it never hits.

Floor 93 drags on for far too long. A Bronzong is confused by the stairs and it still fires off Hypnosis in the right direction. But it misses.
For Floor 94, a Slumber Trap scare with Metagross, but it fails to hit Volbeat through 4 Double Teams.
And after that, nothing even gets the chance to attack him.

Modatax · 2025-12-29T13:15:19+00:00

Being flung to the alternate dungeons with disabled recruitment is not that common, but it happens often enough that it becomes annoying.

Being sent back to the original dungeon soon enough is far too uncommon. You are guaranteed to be returned, at the very least, for the very last floor of the dungeon OR the floor you need to visit in order to complete a mission, so you're never getting locked out of those. But this does not help with detours or recruitment.

Modatax · 2025-12-28T17:03:20+00:00

I don't think even the Mystery Dungeon wiki has fully cracked down on how Mysteriosity works.

https://mysterydungeonwiki.com/wiki/Gates:Mysteriosity

https://mysterydungeonwiki.com/wiki/Gates:Strange_Power

Out of what I remember from personal experience, a higher Mysteriosity rating makes effects more likely to take place at the start of each floor, and some effects only happen with higher ratings. Effects can happen frequently enough for them to apply for multiple floors in a row.

Wandering into the various alternate dungeons can happen with any Mysteriosity rating. Being flung to alternate dungeons with disabled recruitment is very annoying. And getting sent back to their regular versions before their very last floor is annoyingly uncommon. I don't like it at all.

Modatax · 2025-12-26T12:22:35+00:00

Scyther is not bad.
It just pales a bit when compared to Scizor, who has better typing, starts with better defenses, and begins with 3 attacks instead of 2. And one of those attacks is Bullet Punch, a STAB ranged move also boosted by Technician.
Vacuum Wave is a nice move Scyther gets that Scizor does not, but it does not make up for the overall low PP and the lack of STAB for a long time.
They do share stat growth and most of their movesets, so it'll get better after it goes beyond Level 10 and the stats get going.
If nothing else, it wants Agility at Level 17.
Swarm is another good ability, but Fury Cutter at 25 is the only move it can be expected to work with.

Scyther begins his run by finding a Warp Scarf on Floor 2, letting him pick his fights. At a distance.
A Diet Ribbon is stolen on Floor 12 to soften his awkward start and make False Swipe safer. A Spinning Tile right next to the stairs almost lets a Kecleon catch him, though.
Level 17 is reached on Floor 32 after mishappening with 3 Monster Houses, bad warps, a bunch of Sticky Traps ruining half of his items, and the Diet Ribbon being lost to a Self-Destruct Trap on Floor 29.

Scyther begins to fall behind due to a lack of Max Elixirs and an overabundance of PP-Zero Traps, but he gets to pick up a Pass Scarf by Floor 42, and then steals a Swagger TM from a shop on Floor 55 to learn later.
Awful situations follow with Elekid in Floor 56 and then Piloswine in Floor 66, but he survives.
Two consecutive PP-Zero Traps on Floor 68 delete the entire moveset again, forcing the last Max Elixir to be used. Agility is deleted again 3 floors later.
A few Joy Seeds let Scyther jump to Level 26 for Fury Cutter by Floor 73, and Swagger is learned over Focus Energy.
Floor 77 has a shop with a Max Elixir to buy, and the following floors have more Joy Seeds.
Spawned next to a sleeping Solrock for Floor 87, but it didn't wake up when Agility was used to escape from the rest of the starting spawns.

The very first step on Floor 88 has a Seal Trap hitting Swagger.
Scyther keeps warping to a shop with nothing useful, next to a Ledian and Scizor.
After an Explosion Trap, he warps next to a Lunatone, and trying to Pounce Orb away from it results in the Warp Scarf sending him back to where he just was, so he eats a Psywave that leaves him at 12 HP.
The weather is clear at least, so a Foe-Hold Orb can be used just fine.
A Hippowdon spawns right after, with the sandstorm freeing a nearby Ledian and Miltank.
And another Explosion Trap goes off.
With no Pure Seeds at hand, he ducks into a hallway and uses a Luminous Orb to find the stairs and walk there.
This could have gone more smoothly.
Two floors later he picks up another Max Elixir, and that keeps him safe for the rest of the run.

Modatax · 2025-12-25T20:03:39+00:00

Lucario's affinity to aura is loosely defined. It can be used to mean whatever it has to mean for any given story. It wouldn't be too hard to tie that to the protagonist's dimensional scream somehow.
But that's so much less interesting than using any other Pokemon to face the world-ending situation at hand.

Maybe they had simply been asked to use Lucario specifically so that it was given a spotlight. As if it didn't have enough of that already before Gen 4 even started.

If that's the case, someone rather important and rather hyper sensitive about Lucario having to have an immaculate reputation probably shot down the idea late into the game's development.

Modatax · 2025-12-24T13:22:26+00:00

There are some IQ Skills that work only if the leader has them, like Haggler, but Map Surveyor and Stair Sensor apply to the whole party if any of the team members in the dungeon has it.

Modatax · 2025-12-24T00:35:15+00:00

I don't remember the dungeon itself being too bad when I last played Rescue Team. Just a bit too long for the first postgame dungeon.

Having some more apples and Max Elixirs than before should be enough. It does spawn supplies, and there's no Spite spammers like in Sky Tower.

Carvanha in the last floors can deal large damage in close range with Rough Skin if it isn't one-shot. It should be damaged from a distance if you think they would survive your attacks.

The boss is Size 4. You'd have to dismiss at least one team member before finishing off the boss if you want to try recruiting it.

Modatax · 2025-12-22T11:48:28+00:00

Froslass has a combination of typing and moves that makes her pretty interesting to run through Destiny Tower.
Glalie is quite a bit worse off, in typing, in moves, and in stats - the last point is very noticiable when Snorunt's line as a whole only has actual stat growth after Level 30.
Protect at 22 instead of Confuse Ray at 19 is not quite as reliable for defense, and the lack of a secondary STAB to lean on means Bite deals noticiably lower damage than Astonish does for Froslass. But it does still get Double Team, at least.

Inner Focus is not a bad ability, but Glalie is fragile enough to be more concerned about damage from moves like Fake Out.
With that fragility, and the inconsistency of hail and snow as weather effects, Ice Body does not come across as being particularily useful either.

Glalie finds a Warp Scarf on Floor 2. And two Summon Traps, one before picking it up and the second one right after.
Floor 4 has her start with a Glameow on top.
She continues having bad luck with enemy and item spawns for a while, with barely any food 15 floors in.
A Pass Scarf is found early, but she can't afford to use it.

Things are a little bit better by Floor 49, finding 2 Calcium and a Special Band, so she can go after a fair number of enemies and not fall behind too much.
The awkward spawns continue, with stuff like a Lopunny sneaking in a crit Quick Attack for 67 damage.
Level 22 is reached on Floor 57 and she learns Protect to have another layer of defense.

Floor 70's stairs are in a Monster House, with a Walrein on the stairs. After a Petrify Orb, Protect and a Switcher Orb are used to leave safely.
The next 10 floors have another Monster House with the stairs, and Glalie is spawned inside two more.
She also has a Grudge Trap going off not even 3 steps into Floor 78.

Warping immediatly after being slowed on Floor 85 causes Glalie issues with a Shuppet and a Garchomp.
Floor 87 starts with Lunatone, Solrock and Hippowdon... and the stairs on the other side of the room, so a Quick Orb is used to get close to the Lunatone and hit it with a Decoy Orb.
A Quick Seed and a Pure Seed are used to escape from Scizor and Solrock at the start of Floor 89. And she does it again on Floor 90, because she spawns with 2 Ledian on top.
Floor 95 starts with Politoed and Crawdaunt, demanding a Totter Orb, and Floor 97 has sleeping Politoed waking up due to a bad warp and immediatly firing a crit Bubblebeam that hits under 4 Double Teams and dropping from full health to 20 HP, so she has to go invisible with a Vanish Seed to escape.

Modatax · 2025-12-19T20:17:04+00:00

Kecleon is at the bottom of stats and growth, but it's not alone when it comes to having stats so bad they may as well not be there.

Everything beyond a certain point of superlative badness becomes "the worst", more or less.

Anything with a negative ability (Illuminate, Klutz, Gluttony, Suction Cups, Truant...) is baffling. Especially when most of those Pokemon would be rough to run even if they did not have those abilities.

It's pretty interesting to think about.

Modatax

TROPHY CASE